Fixing the UI

from Stardock Forums
Hi,

Am I the only person experiencing real pain because of the UI?

GalCiv Trivia Question #1:

Suppose you want to launch a colony ship containing 100M civilians from a system containing 10B civilians. What is the fastest way to do this?

a) Adjust the slider until the colony ship contains 100M civilians. Then press LAUNCH.

b) Open a dialog box that lets you type in "100." Then launch.

c) Slide the slider to 0M, because that's the closest to 100M that the slider will actually slide to (and because there *is* no dialog box or equivalent). Then click on the "increase" button at least 100 times.

Answer: c

GalCiv Trivia Question #2:

Suppose you want to trade a technology for the most cash possible from an AI player. You can most easily achieve this, by:

a) Browsing the source code to figure out how the AI values technology, and then read the tech data files for the details on each technology.

b) Open the cash dialog box. Enter an outrageous offer. Submit the offer. If it is rejected, repeat this process with an offer 1BC less until it is accepted.

c) The UI presents every tradable item along with a corresponding cash value. The player then balances his side of the shopping cart with the AI's side. When the AI provides cash to fill the balance of a trade, a dialog box appears similar to the one used to purchase military and social items.

Answer: For the lucky few, a. For most of us, b.

GalCiv Trivia Question #3:

While purchasing a colony ship at the beginning of the game, your finger slips and you accidentally purchase a constructor. You best deal with this by:

a) Clicking the Undo Purchase button.
b) Restarting the game
c) Playing on- -hey, it's like a tougher playing level.

Answer: b or c, depending on your mood.

GalCiv Trivia Question #4:

You are considering whether to send a constructor on a 5 sector journey to upgrade a starbase, and want to know what modules you can add to that starbase. To do this you:

a) Open the starbase, which will tell you what modules it has and what modules you are allowed to add, as well as what they do.

b) Open the starbase, which will tell you what modules you have. Then read through every tech you have, listing the modules that you can add to a starbase that you haven't already added. Then open the starbase module data files to find out what these modules do.

Answer: b


Enough!

Here are some more UI requests:

5) The main galaxy view screen should be zoomable. There is little reason why the squares must be so large; rarely in a game has so little information required so much space. (In Civ, the squares tend to be much smaller yet more information is conveyed (terrain, improvements, cities, etc. In GalCiv, the screen is mostly blank space.)

6) When moving a ship, a line segment should appear between the ship and its destination, annotated by the amount of time the journey will take, sort of the way civ does it. This will help eliminate surprises - -like when you move the wrong ship.

7) When the economy screen says that a science projecgt will be complete next turn, it should mean it.

8) The economy screen should have an option whereby a player can enter a morale value, and let the system maximize tax revenue for that value. Isn't that what most people do by jiggering sliders every turn?

Anyway,

KenK
188 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
On the tradescreen, the AI will accept the cash when the text turns green.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Also, there are rumours that if you keep offering ridiculous trades (e.g. ones that have the text in yellow), the AI wil like you less. You're welcome to try, anyway. ;)

Oh, and for #8: Don't. Given that morale jumps up and down and sidways, automatically adjusting the tax rate based on morale is a bad idea. Why? If it is too high, you won't get maximum efficiency from it (and have a low morale.) If it is too low, your economy will suffer forcing you to raise it (and thus reducing morale.)

Besides, I tried setting it to get the most money, and that hurt me more than an optimal setting that produces less money. Setting it to the best morale isn't ideal either.
Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
CariElf:

This is better than nothing, but it would be REALLY REALLY nice, to be able to offer the computer a deal, and have him counter offer.

For example, "I'm willing to give you trade for 9000 credits." He says, "no, but I'll give you 400 credits."

Or, a feature I'd really like is simply, "I'll give you you Trade, what will you give me for it?"

Often I've already decided I'm going to sell the AI something, but it's a long process to find out what you can get for it. At least it's more cumbersome than it needs to be.

Obviously, the more complicated the trade, the more difficult it is to figure out what's the best deal for something is.

I really like the idea of counter-offers. I've seen them in several sports simulators. You offer a player, they counter by asking for more cash or other players added to the deal. Something like that (with tech instead of players) would be great.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
While the turning green is a *huge* improvement, there's still no skill involved. If there's a set offer amount that turns it green, why not just display that number, click 'agreed' next to the item, and be done?

The only hiccup here is you sometimes want to set the terms of agreement for longer months, etc. So given that this is important for many reasons, I suppose the green thing is the best we've got.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I am in total agreement with Ken on points 1, 2, and 4. Those are the source of no end of annoyance for me. I would love to see them improved. And I'm going to take this opportunity to lobby for a slider bar (and/or mousewheel support) for the list of researchable/researched technologies in the tech screen. Way too much clicking is required to scroll through that thing.

Point 3 hasn't been a problem for me. So while an undo button would be nice, I don't put it on nearly the same priority level as the four things above. In fact, I'd rather see points 6 and 7 addressed.

I think that point 5 is a good one, but I doubt that it is possible to have a zoomable main screen since that would require different sets of graphics depending on the size, which I doubt anyone has the time to create. I agree with Sigma 7 on Point 8.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
BTW, I think in 1.03 they added "on the fly" feed back. Just move the slider until it turns green then kick it with the arrows one way or another to zero in on where it is no longer green. Still pretty mindless, and the ability offer and counter offer would be nice, not just cash. If the ask for something you did not offer and you oblige or decline it should affect your diplomatic standing. The AI seems to tend toward outrageusly unbalanced trade offers when they are spontaneous, hopefully something a little more in line with mrketplace dickering could be done.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Getting rid of some of the more painful aspects of trading would take this game right off the scale IMO.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
If you mean mousewheel support for the starbase upgrade win, I've added that. I don't know if it's in 1.04 but it'll definitely be in the expansion. It should also be supported on the new governor screen.